Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Genghis Khan: Environmentally Friendly?

A neat study came out indicating that Genghis Khan's bloodthirsty invasion of, uh, the entire WORLD actually did the planet some good.

"Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history - after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest.

"The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study.

"The deaths of 40 million people meant that large areas of cultivated land grew thick once again with trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And, although his methods may be difficult for environmentalists to accept, ecologists believe it may be the first ever case of successful manmade global cooling."

Click on the link below to read the whole article, it's very science and very cool. However, I'm glad this relationship of depopulation/carbon emissions didn't come to light during the LAST presidency-- while we may have seen a flip-flop on the right's climate change policies, it wouldn't have ended well. Can't you just see His Royal Highness George II suddenly deciding we needed to invade Iran to save the forests?